


There I Perceive Valkyries

by basketcasewrites



Category: Black Panther (2018), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Crossover, F/F, F/M, References to Norse Religion & Lore
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-11
Updated: 2018-06-11
Packaged: 2019-05-20 23:07:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14903912
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/basketcasewrites/pseuds/basketcasewrites
Summary: Men go the way to Hel.





	There I Perceive Valkyries

**Author's Note:**

> "There I perceive valkyries and ravens, accompanying the wise victory-tree to the drink of the holy offering."  
> — The Prose Edda; Chapter 2

"Look, lass," the hulking legionary begins, turned on the seat of the backless high stool he leans his side against the grimy bar top and faces Valkyrie. His eyes are bloodshot, red from liquor and the smoke in the pub and whatever concoction of herbs he smoked when the night broke. "I don't care how good of a soldier you are, yer not gon' make it a day past the borders."

Cold beer, bitter and homemade, settles in her mouth before she swallows. A drop escapes, clings to the corner of her lip, trickles down her chin; she let's it.

Beside her, leaning in to be heard over the noises of the pub on a Friday night, the legionary talks. It is senseless babble. In another time Valkyrie might have found his vulnerable drunkenness charming.  
She wipes the beer away, crudely, with the back of her hand.

Pint raised halfway to her lips, she looks at the legionary out the corner of her eye. He is pale hair and pale eyes, pale skin and pale lips— all covered in a light sheen of sweat. She does not even remember his name. But he is sweet enough and interested and Valkyrie toys with the idea that she might take him home tonight.

"You're right," Valkyrie answers to the last thing she consciously heard him say, "I won't make it a day past the borders. I'll make it two. And that's all I need."

"Yer not listening," he slurs, "Yer should jus' give up on this whole quest... Come to my quarters instead. By Odin, I'm more fun than this... silly thing."

"It's not silly," Valkyrie says through gritted teeth. Her movements are violent and shot through with contained anger as she downs the last of the drink, which cost her a half days payment, and then pushes back the rickety stool. Outbursts are common here, she barely gets more than a seconds glance. "I don't care how good of a soldier you think you are, no one in this room is attracted to your slurred speech and dependency on the witch's erectile herbs."

The legionary stares after Valkyrie. Watches, dazed and drugged, as she grabs her pack from underneath the stool and drapes a heavy coat over her shoulders.  
She exits as she entered, in a fading haze of smoke and determination fuelled fury.

°

She was born on the night of a storm. A tempest which destroyed half the kingdom.

Her first cry rang through the small candle-lit room and outside, as if it had been waiting for her birth, the storm died down as swiftly as it began. For six hours the storm had raged, for six hours had her mother lay in labour.

Her mother, exhausted and clinging to consciousness enough to gaze upon the new born, named her Brunhilde.

"Kicking and screaming, your brow drawn in a focused little frown, you came into this world," her mother would sometimes murmur, smoothing the lines in Valkyrie's forehead, dusting the hair from her eyes. "You looked like you were ready to go war. Like you were ready to win. And I could feel it in you, too, this warrior spirit. _Ready for battle_ ," she would murmur, a faraway smile curving her lips and distant look creeping into her eyes, "Always ready for battle. So that's what I named you."

Valkyrie can hear the whisper of her mother's words around her. A long silenced voice carrying in with the gentle breeze and dancing through the deadened trees to reach and envelope her.

The saddle is hard, inflexible. She spurs the solid steed forward, pushing Corn to her limits through the looming entanglement of trees and unilluminated stares from the shadows. The movement is jarring.  
Time-worn wood hits against the unarmoured  backs of her thighs. She would be uncomfortable if she weren't so used to this type of pain. The type of pain that comes with battles and rough travels.

The whinny of the horse is loud, the horse's furious snort louder; she wants out of these woods as much as Valkyrie does.

"Almost there, girl," Valkyrie assures her, spurs the horse forward with the heels of her boots and a tug of the reigns.

The Dark Forest, as it is known by most in the kingdom, is a thick maze of overgrown roots and gnarled trees, determinedly reaching branches. It is a wall of darkness, a home of witchery and sorcery of the foulest kind.

It is solid. Valkyrie is a warrior, an experienced rider who has traveled these woods for years, yet the touch of sunlight and its burn on her skin is a surprise as she breaks through the grey darkness of the Dark Forest.

Corn whinnies gratefully, her steps slow as Valkyrie directs her further away from the the forest.

"It's okay, Corn." Valkyrie smooths the horses mane and murmurs, "It's okay." New horses must always be treated with the utmost care. Especially, if like Corn, they had not ever touched foot into a place like the forest from which they came.

°

There's a story told in Asgard— in few of the neighbouring kingdoms, too. A fairytale whispered around roaring bonfires, told to half-sleeping children and silent babies. A myth some claim is true.

There exists a castle to the north of the rising star, they say, and south of the crescent moon. A circular tower of brick and magic, rising to the heavens and disappearing beyond the reach of clouds and sky.  
There is only one entrance into the tower, one exit. There is only one way in, one way out.

Valkyrie always scoffed at the story. She scoffs at it now, snorting out a loud exhale of hair as she dismounts Corn. "Good horse," she murmurs absently, tips of her fingers just grazing over the horse's tangled white mane.

Asgard's brilliance is blinding. Gold buildings touching the sky, castles and towers of fine glass and liquid fire. Standing in her suit of faded blue, Valkyrie feels a fleeting inadequacy such as she never feels. The feeling, there and gone before he has a chance to miss it.

Brunhilde, she remembers. Born of a storm, ready for battle.

She does not see Heimdall as she passes through the exaggerated entrance, gates of onyx wrought with fine rainbow strands. She does not see him but she can feel him watching her enter, watching the tangled pathway behind her, watching everything all at once.  
Valkyrie does not see him but she knows that he knows she is there and, a small smile playing on dry lips, raises a hand in a slow wave.

Corn follows behind Valkyrie, the _clip clop_ of hooves against the smooth rainbow bridge, echoing in the enfolding silence, unnerving.

°

There is a story told in Asgard, told in few of the kingdoms surrounding. A story of a castle which stands just below the morning sun, or to the north of the rising star. A castle which stands in the shade of the waning moon, or to the south of the crescent.  
It is impenetrable, inescapable. Guarded fiercely by witches magic and creatures of darkness.

There is a castle, a tower reaching to the sky with only one entrance and one exit, a window one-hundred meters from the ground. There is a princess, they say, one of ocean blue eyes and an infinite length of gold-spun hair, who is trapped inside.

"You want me to do what?" Valkyrie asks. Half in incredulous disbelief, half in impatience, she struggles not to raise her voice.

Her hands dangle at her sides, loose fists clenching and unclenching. Rigid in his throne, a cape of shimmering gold to match all else in the kingdom, Odin casts a cool gaze over Valkyrie.

She remembers when he was younger, when the tired lines around his eyes and his mouth were not so visible. But now is not a time to be reminiscent, to indulge in stilted nostalgia.

Frigga sits in the throne beside Odin, as rigid in her seat as the king. "Please," she almost pleads, her eyes meeting Valkyrie's with a look of such intensity Valkyrie cannot hold it. Frown slipping, she looks away from the queen. Frigga clears her throat, allows her eyes to wander over her husband on her one side and her sullen son on her other. "I heed you listen."

There are lines on the queen's face, too. Exhaustive lines draw beneath eyes and around a fine mouth.

Valkyrie nods. "I make no offers or promises, but I will listen."

"We lost a son," the queen begins, and if Valkyrie ever expected her voice to shake at the utterance of these words she is not surprised when it doesn't.

Valkyrie let's the words settle over her, cover her in their thin blanket.  
Valkyrie knows this, all people in all the kingdoms surrounding Asgard know of the lost son.

Havoc wreaked in the kingdoms for days. People ached, people wept, people grieved openly in shops and along streets.

Valkyrie did her grieving alone.

°

They call him the lost son. _Lost_.  
As if in any moment someone could come across him and lead him back.  
As if he could wake up one day and remember the way back to Asgard, to his mother and his home.

Beautiful euphemism exists for everything.

It is easier to say the _lost_ son, the _lost_ heir, the _lost_ light of Asgard than to even think the word _dead._  
There is no beauty or elegance in the _dead_ son, the _dead_ heir, the _dead_ light of Asgard.

Frigga does not say these things to Valkyrie, but this is to where Valkyrie allows her mind to wander. No, Frigga does not say these things, but Valkyrie can imagine that she must often think them.

Instead, with the clear voice only a queen could have, she says, as if Valkyrie might not know, "It had been a celebration when he disappeared. One minute standing before a crowd of us all, the next minute... _gone_." Taken in a flash of red smoke. Never seen again.

Valkyrie remembers. The kingdoms had been in uproar, chaos and misery reigned for months.

The queen leans forward in the throne which is large enough to swallow her. "It has been difficult for us all, these last few ninety-nine years." Wisps of a distant wistfulness cling to the edges of her words, a faint sadness.

If she had a beer, Valkyrie would drink heartily to that. "It has." She shakes her head.

"We never stopped searching," Odin says then, his uncomfortable shift in the throne is barely noticeable. "We have followed every clue and every suggestion. We have recruited mages from all nine surrounding kingdoms. We have sent out search parties of our greatest..."

"Heimdall—?" Valkyrie queries, leaves her sentence hanging in the empty air in the cavernous room.

"Cannot see him," Frigga ends sharply, softly. "But we know he is alive. I can feel it. A mother," she pauses, "A mother can feel these things."

"And you," Valkyrie says and let's her eyes settle on each of the three before her, "You think the answers lie with this princess? This fairytale princess."

"It isn't a fairytale," Loki says, speaking up for the first time in what has passed as slowly as an hour riding in the burning sun. "And it isn't a princess."

Odin sighs then, the sound echoing in the empty hall. His face falls, he crumples into himself. In that one he is not the the great king, not the All-Father, but an old man still grieving his son.

She hears the words and the air around her turns into a vacuum, swallowing air and sounds. Loki speaks, but if he voices any words Valkyrie cannot hear them; his mouth moves silently. _It's Thor,_ his every sentence shapes itself into those two first words.

"What do you mean it's Thor?" Valkyrie yells, the last thing she cares about now is minding the volume of her voice, controlling her rage. "I've spent all this time searching for him and you're telling me you've known where he is. _All along._ "

"We did not always know. We do not know now. For the longest time we searched blindly," Frigga says. "Imagine the best Asgard's cavalry has to offer and know that it was doubled once we found out where he might be. Trackers, mages, soldiers."

"Even I looked for him," Loki adds, hair falling in his face, head bent forward he is an eery portrait of a weeping willow. He manages, somehow, to make each word sound as if it is on the edge of a forlorn sigh, as if he is on the edge of a sob.

It sickens Valkyrie.

"What about you? A magician." She demands, enraged. Eyes on fire, Valkyrie looks to the King and Queen and extends an arm to gesture towards Loki, "So you rather a trickster than a warrior."

"I am far stronger than you!"

"You are a party clown. I could kill you with my eyes closed."

"Enough," Odin orders, voice cold and eyes colder. If Valkyrie were the type to shrink back in fear, she imagines she would flinch from the might of his gaze alone. But Odin does not scare her, All-Father that he is. "We stand in a court, the finest in Asgard and all kingdoms. If you wish to fight, fight. Outside or in a ring, but not in this court."

Frigga clears her throat then and something terrifying crosses her eyes as she glances sideways at her husband. He is silent again, a stone staring off into the near distance without so much a blink of an eye.

"If you have been searching as you say you have, then you will know that a ninety-nine years and eight months have passed us by," Frigga speaks, softer now than before, yet commanding the same arrest of attention from her audience. "The curse is a frigid one, with iron rules. If he is not freed on the eve of Alfablót, exactly one hundred years since he was taken, he will be doomed to live another one hundred years before he stands a chance of being set free."

"So what?" Valkyrie questions, arms raised in a guarded shrug. "The fool is the God of Thunder, is he not? Can't he save himself. Or am I supposed to go prancing after every God who gets themselves stuck in some curse. I'd _never_ have a day of rest. Send Loki, you were content with sending him the last time."

"The curse is a frigid one," Frigga repeats slowly. "It can only be broken by a Valkyrie."

"And I... am the last Valkyrie," Valkyries whispers, breathlessly, all the air stolen from her lungs.

The sword at her hip was given to her by Sigrdrífa when Valkyrie herself was young, when she was Brunhilde. Amongst the fine carving— intricate details in gold twining and untwining— in rough, unpractised hand is carved half of a small pair of wings; the other half carved, in her hand, into the handle of an enchanted hammer.

She sighs. "Am I to do it alone?" It would not be the first time.

"Loki has graciously offered himself to you."

At that, Valkyrie snorts. "My queen," Valkyrie says, lip curling in disgust as she sneers at Loki, "I may know one son but the other I would not trust if you placed him bound on my doorstep, hands tied behind his back, and an apple stuffed in his mouth like the pig that he is."

"Then your own team," Frigga says, speaking before Loki has a chance to jump into the conversation. "Whoever you see fit."

"You have my allegiance and the promise of my services," Valkyrie offers, rough voice steady, "Two bags of gold if I accept, three chests of it when I succeed." She _knows_ Thor, yes. In another time and place she might readily have said she loves him, but she still needs money to survive.

 

So she slings a sword across her back, Brunhilde does. And she sighs, exhales a breath of air that fights its way up from her toes and coils in her stomach and launches through her lungs to dance with the wind breezing past her mouth.

So she spares a glance to the sky, blank and blue expanding above and beyond her, Brunhilde does. And she feels eyes on her, Loki and Heimdall tracking her movements as she prepares to exit Asgard.

So she glances back at the rising kingdom of Asgard. And, her hand on the reigns of a stolen horse, dephtless brown eyes raised to heaven, she says a quiet prayer.

At least, that is how the myths go.

 

The sword is heavy against her back, solid between her shoulder blades. Her hair, tied in a thick brown braid down her back, hits against its heavy golden hilt.

A thin fog burns her eyes, sensitive from sleepless hours. Her body is a mess of tangles and aches, of knots in her hardened muscle. Her throat scratchy, as dry as her wind-torn lips.

Corn kicks at the ground and grunts. The constant riding is harder for her than it is for Valkyrie, and she is desperate for rest. Her hoof kicks at a mangled pebble, sends it flying into the thatched wall of a squat ramshackle building.

Practiced grace is not worn away by the passage of time or the hold of drink. Valkyrie tries to separate the threads of her old life from the tapestry of her new life, has tried to for years. But she lifts herself from the saddle and falls to her feet in one strong and fluid motion, as if the wind lifted her and settled her where she belongs.

"Matilda," Valkyrie calls to the serving girl emptying a jar of spoiled wine into the garden, straw blonde hair falling into washed out green eyes, "Sort out the horse. I won't be long."

Matilda holds the jar, now empty with just the smallest droplets clinging to its rim and running down its curving sides, to her hip. Her look is cutting, assessing. She is a skittish thing, shy and unable to hold a steady gaze for too long.

Her gaze is steady then. Matilda seeks Valkyrie's familiar eyes and lifts the corner of her slim mouth, as worryingly pale as the rest of her.  Disbelieving, she says, "The day that you spend less than six hours inside that dump is the day I will eat a bag of turnips."

Valkyrie rests a hand on Matilda's upperarm, rubs the coarse material between her thumb and forefinger. "I hope you know you're an awful person and that your constant belittling is not good for my drinking problem."

"Please stop visiting all those support groups, they make you sound like Hildegard," Matilda says with a laugh, so close that Valkyrie can feel the warmth of her breath again her skin. Her eyes shine, for the split of a second, then it is gone. Voice low, she murmurs, "Heard you're on a quest again... Searching for some _princess of the tower._ It isn't proper to be fooling around, not when you're searching for a princess."

"It's more complicated than that." Because it is. Yet, sworn to secrecy, she can explain nothing.

She imagines that ninety-nine years of grief and loss takes its toll on even the most peaceful of souls, and Valkyrie imagines it would take more than that to destroy the sanity of Asgard's royal family.

"It isn't proper," Matilda repeats, firmer. She takes a step away from Valkyrie, her smile spreads across her face like the sun across a field of flowers. The girl is swift, she swoops in and plants a soft kiss on the curve of Valkyrie's jaw. _No hard feelings,_ she could just have easily whispered. Then she is gone, disappearing around the pub like the ghost she resembles.

Valkyrie breathes out a tired sigh, her exhale met by a gruff neigh from behind her. She turns to look over her shoulder and snaps, "Don't look at me like that. Stupid horse."

*

A sword on her back, beneath a thin blue cloak. Heavy from the looks of it. A dagger hidden by her thigh. Two daggers. Nakia shakes her head and taps against the table two more times— _four_ daggers.

The door to the pub, a block of roughened edges, closes behind the woman without a prompt from her. Wind or magic? Technology? Wanda can't decide. Not even on the more brutish borders of Asgard are they without the advancements of the city.

"Sword gay," Shuri says, slipping a coin into the center of the round table. Sixteen-years-old, if this were any other establishment she would have been made to stand outside. She smiles around her straw, her drink a non-alcoholic strawberry blend Okoye shoved into her hands.

"Don't do this," Nakia groans, tip of her dagger boring a hole into the table.

Okoye, leaning back into the coveted worn corner of the booth— wordlessly claiming it when they entered and smiling at Shuri's grumblings— reaches into the small pouch dangling against her hip from her slim gold belt.  
Reclined in the seat, she unashamedly takes up space; booted legs are kicked up to rest against the tabletop, the thickness of her pants saving her skin from splinters and residue.

"Dagger bisexual," Okoye counters, smile slow as she stretches past the reach of her legs to place two gold coins over Shuri's one.

"I'm with Okoye on this one," Wanda mutters, eyes glancing over Nakia and Okoye before landing on the woman.

A Valkyrie, Nakia knows. The tattoo on the inside of her wrist difficult to miss. No doubt Okoye has seen it, too.

Nakia swallows down a mouthful of the day's special, smooth as it curls in her mouth and slides down her throat. Cool as it settles in her belly. She shakes her head at the other three, coolly adamant in her non-participation.

Cold cocktail, tinted purple from purple flowers dangling by their stems in a forest of trees and folding over the backyard and driveway, stains the curve of her lips. A week trekking through the mountains, she is thirsty for anything that isn't the cloudy water they resorted to drinking once their supply ran out. Cloudy, because the portable purifier Shuri built from scratch was trampled by a bumbling sheep.

The four of them are an odd quartet of traveling companions, a group of misfits who fell in together almost completely by accident.

Okoye and Nakia, whose stories entangle so thoroughly and painfully it would be an exercise in pulling teeth to try and find where one begins and the other ends. Difficult to find if this distinction between them even exists.

There is the princess— Nakia eyes her sipping her juice, ever-busy hands fiddling with a music box she offered to fix for the bartender in exchange for free drinks.  
Okoye found her, curled into a tight ball, asleep a step away from the entrance to their hideaway. She hadn't introduced herself as a princess, but Okoye and Nakia spent enough time in the royal guard to recognize royalty.

They were not fit to look after her, not as they were when she first arrived. It was a stroke of luck that, once she was warm and fed and with a roof over her head, Shuri could all but look after herself.

For awhile, anxious over their future and the security of their freedom, Okoye and Nakia had attempted to return her to her people.

"She is a stubborn child," Okoye _tsked_ for the sixth time in as many hours, tapping the edge of a slim pen against the tips of her nails and fingers.

Shuri would not tell them where she came from and insisted earnestly that she would not be missed.

"Like you." Nakia laughed, her hand on Okoye's arm a brief touch.

Shuri curses under her breath, flickers her eyes up and away from the box to see if anyone heard her. Nakia meets her gaze sharply, dropping her eyes only when the girl mumbles a quiet apology and ducks her head. Chin tucked into her chest, fingers flying over the mechanics of the small machine.

Okoye scratches at her head. Her hair's growing in again and she hates it.

"After this we are visiting a barber," Okoye says, crossing her right leg over the left.

Nakia casts around for a clock, finds one tucked in a corner of the room, hidden behind decorations forgotten since Christmas. "I am sure they don't open this late."

"I could do it for you," Wanda offers quietly, nails painted in chipped red scratching at the surface, "I used to do my brother's before he decided he wanted to grow it out."

Okoye shrugs, smiles at the corner of her mouth. "If I don't have to pay..."

She and Okoye, Nakia thinks with a wry smile, have a knack for picking up strays.  
They found Shuri but Wanda— _Wanda—_ had found them. A tiny little thing dressed in thick tights ripped at the shins and thighs, drowning in the oversized red sweater she wears even now, came up to the three of them. Approached them in a bar much like this one, in a city where death loomed, and voice eerily clear, said, "Heard you kill monsters."

"We don't _kill monsters_ ," Nakia corrected, slightly tipsy, "We search for the end of the rainbow and the pots of gold, the cursed apples—"

"We search and we save," Okoye interrupted, "We're explorers. You are looking for executioners, you have the wrong table."

Wanda shook her head. She sat down. She stayed.

In the heat of the bar Wanda sits with her sleeves rolled up. It had taken her weeks before she was comfortable enough to wear her clothes in that way around them. It could have been her insecurity about the white line drawn in her pale skin, traveling the length of her forearm from her thumb to her elbow; it was most likely the slim cursive print adorning the inside of her wrist. _Pietro,_ it reads.

Okoye once asked her about the tattoo, the four of them around a roaring fire, balancing on logs or seated cross-legged on the needle covered floor. The day had been long— the _week_ had been long— searching for a fabled sword they feared was exactly that, a fable.

"Your lover?" Okoye asked, playfully wagging her eyebrows.

"My brother," Wanda answered, a coldness creeped into her voice. A hardness they could always see in the set of her jaw and in her eyes, but had not expected directed their way.

They are an odd quartet of companions, that much is true. But Nakia can see, too, that they fit together. Puzzle pieces overlapping and falling into place. They are a family, built on strength and fragility, even if no one dared to say the words out loud.

Footsteps sound their way through the bar. Nakia looks up from her drink. The other's tense. Okoye's hand settles on the dagger strapped to her thigh, poised for a confrontation. Around them, the room has fallen into a silence heavy with loaded anticipation.

Nakia gets the idea that the Valkyrie is a familiar face amongst these parts. The eyes of the patrons dart to and away from them, travel between her and Nakia and the people around them. This is not a social call, they all know.

"Hildegard tells me you know about curses." No greetings or pleasantries, she does not dance around what she wants.

Nakia knows that if circumstances were different she would immediately like her; after all, Okoye _is_ her closest confidant.

"We're not executioners," Okoye says, hackles raised it is more an unfriendly growl.

The Valkyrie smiles, a short and twisted smile. "I don't need an executioner." Her hand drops to the double-edged sword at her hip.

*

"There are different kinds of curses," Nakia says.

Valkyrie grunts a reply. She lounges in a sofa, upholstered in thick black material and with cushions that sink beneath her, listens with only half an ear.

The apartment isn't Valkyrie's, not really, and the photographs on the walls are all excerpts of someone else's life. She studies them closely. Pangs at the sight of a wide smile, crooked and gleaming beside her forced frown, of the picture next to it where Thor had tickled her until she burst out laughing.

The myths all describe a cursed _princess_. The royal family had made sure to spin the tale as such as soon as it began to spread, Frigga had uttered this to Valkyrie herself.

Was it easier for them if the kingdom did not know their son's fate? Was it easier for the people, Valkyrie included, to believe their prince dead rather than trapped and cursed?

Valkyrie does not know. She does not think so.

"You are going to die out there if you don't listen," Okoye says, eyeing Valkyrie.

"I haven't died yet. And who says I'm not listening?" Valkyrie questions, dropping her legs from the sofa to land on the floor. Sitting she keeps Okoye's gaze, meets cold iron stare with cold iron stare, and, when the smile comes, she returns it.

Nakia stands, arms crossed over her chest near the front of the room. The pale green of her dress forces her to stand apart from the surrounding earth tones, deep browns and deeper greens like that of a forest.

The apartment is unextravagant and elegant. Behind Nakia, halfway to the ceiling, rises a wall of fine wood which masks a short flight of stairs. It houses book after thick book and blends seamlessly into the walls.

They've been here for less than an hour, Shuri and Wanda leaving to explore the apartment and returning in short time. Later, when she has a moment alone, Valkyrie will do her own exploring. She will reacquaint her feet with these floors and her hands with the feel of the marble. A good ninety-six years have passed since she stepped foot into this place.

For now she keeps her feet planted on the ground and reclines in the sofa. "Okay... Curses. I'm all ears."

Nakia shakes her head. "There are all kinds of curses. Generational curses. Occult curses."

"He lost a bet, I think," Valkyrie tells them, "A witch put a spell on him."

"Cast him aside because of that?" Okoye asks. Behind her, curled up in a large-cushioned chair by the window, Shuri sniggers.

"What can I say?" Valkyrie shrugs. "Asgardians are petty."

"It's not like we don't know that," Wanda says coolly.

"Loki," Shuri says, nodding, a smile playing at the corner of her mouth, solemnly agreeing with Wanda.

"Loki." Wanda sighs.

So, Valkyrie absently thinks, Loki's fame transcends Asgard's kingdom. Wouldn't that leave him pleased. She imagines the snake, his beady eyes pinching up when his lips curl in a proud smile.

She had never liked him. Not when they were children and stumbling through meadows and forests blindly, unaware. Not when they were adolescents, walking the same way to different schools. And especially not when he had raised his scepter for the first time, his answer to Thor's Mjolnir.

Thor may love him, but Valkyrie doesn't trust him. She does not ever want to.

°

Nakia teaches Valkyrie about curses. She is quick with questions about the nature of the Thor's curse and huffs out a loud breath when Valkyrie mentions that the witch who cursed him has been captured by Asgard, rots in Odin's dungeon refusing to give away anything.

They have three months, two weeks. Valkyrie tries hard not to count the days.

*

The sun settles on her back, pinpricks of heat against the skin peeking through the elaborate armour. She should be training. But she is tired of being bested, of the stinging in her hands and the burning in her arms. Soon she will be as muscled as the Valkyrie before her. Brunhilde looks forward to it; she wishes it did not have to come with such pain.

She kneels in the grass. A stern scolding awaits her return, she knows this. She can hear the harsh "Brunhilde!" now. Useless to her, Brunhilde tucks it away.

Placid lake stretches on infinitely, past the horizon and to the edges of Asgard. Her toes remember the feel of the lake and itch to be free from her boots, to touch just the surface of the water.

"You stupid horse!" Brunhilde jumps to a stand at the startled yell, dagger in hand and kept out of sight. The voice came from the trees encircling the clearing. Her sisters would be ashamed of her; the intruder and his horse are far from quiet as they pass yet she had not heard them.

There's two of them. She hears the accompanying set of footsteps before she hears his voice.

"You _chose_ to bring her, Loki. Stop complaining."

"You could've told me the branches werd too low for me to actually ride her," the first speaker grumbles.

An exasperated sigh. Brunhilde stands on guard, but she smiles. "Think of it as life experience. A life lesson."

The first boy mumbles under his breath, too quiet for her to hear anything but just loud enough for the second one to laugh out loud. And what a laugh it is. Brunhilde has never heard anything like. It is loud, booming in the way of a hammer against a gong, of thunder and lightning and a hail storm, of a child stumbling upon its first blooming flower.

It is a shattering laugh. It stops the wind, sends the birds into the air, ripples the lake.

Then they enter the forest. And it is as if two suns shine in the clearing. As if no shadows could exist in a world where the stranger's smile exists.

And Brunhilde sheaths her knife. Because the one has shifty eyes and a face she wouldn't trust in Hel, but the other radiates the kind of light she has only seen in older Valkyrie and has only been able to admire from afar.

She clears her throat. "Your horse needs to drink. It looks almost dead."

He pats the dark-haired boy on the back, pushing him forward with a wide grin. "You heard, brother? You look almost dead."

"You're not as funny as you think you are," he says, disdainful. He takes a step away from his brother, bows and extends his hand with a flourish as he stops a few feet away from Brunhilde. "You'll have to excuse my brother, manners and class seem to have skipped him for oafish immaturity. Loki, of Asgard. My brother, Thor."

"I can introduce myself," Thor says.

"Brunhilde," she says.

And she smiles at both of them. And they smile back at her.

 

A warm hand on her shoulder wakes her from her restless, thrashing sleep. Instinctively, Valkyrie's hand goes for the curved knife she keeps under her pillow. Her fingers touch the tip of the hilt, tighten around the handle before she realizes where she is.

Okoye stands over her, dark eyes staring down at Valkyrie. This woman has known her for all but two weeks, yet she gazes at Valkyrie with such an unspeakable concern, such an unnameable worry.

Hair sticks to her forehead, the thin white shirt she had pulled from the closet sticks to her. Tangled in his sheets she shakes, a leaf in the face of wind.

She is a Valkyrie. She is unbreakable; a battle-hardened soldier, a solid wall. She has not shed a tear in over a century.

She does not sob. Her tears are soundless as they fall from dark lashes and trail down scarred cheeks. "He was all I had left," Valkyrie murmurs— and now, in this moment, darkness of the room interrupted by a sliver of moonlight poking through the drawn curtains, she is sixteen and one hundred, she is a small child, she is younger than her three hundred years, she is older than them.

"We know," Nakia says softly, the bed sinking on Valkyrie's right. "It is hard to be alone."

Valkyrie nods. Stinging eyes and raw throat; it is torture to blink, to swallow, to breathe.

Okoye tightens her hold on Valkyrie and says nothing. Valkyrie is grateful for her. For both of them. For the silence they have allowed to settle. For Okoye who holds all Valkyrie's broken pieces together.

"You were just a child," Okoye says, words catching in her throat. Low, maybe more for her own ears than for Nakia or Valkyrie's, she says, "You _are_ just a child."

°

"I am meant to be King," Thor said, cutting into the comfortable silence that they were used to.

"Yeah?" Valkyrie muttered. Distractedly, she picked up a pebble, one of many littered around the lake. Smooth in her hand and catching the sun, she chucked it into the smooth waters. Sniffs at the satisfying _plop plop plop._

Her one hundredth birthday. There was no celebration. She didn't ask for one.

"Yeah," Thor answered softly.

"Your excitement. It's killing me," Brunhilde deadpanned.

He snorted at that, pressed his arm against Brunhilde's when she nudged his side with her elbow.

Thor is the sun and the sunshine.  
Glaring and casting all else around him in depthless shadow. Warm and gentle, too.  
He is the sun. When the sun dulls, even just a little bit, it unsettles the world.

Brunhilde stretched out her legs and laughed. One thing about her and Thor, one of things Brunhilde loved more than anything; they _knew_ each other. They could communicate without words, with a meeting of eyes or a soft sigh. They knew how to make each other happy.

She towered over Thor, grinned down at him, still seated in the long grass with his arms settled across his knees. He looked up at her, golden brow furrowed.

"What's wrong, morning sun? Lost your fighting spirit?" Brunhilde poked. Unsheathing her sword, she quirked an eyebrow. "Or maybe you're afraid of a challenge." She raised her shoulders in a shrug.

"Never." He laughed. The offered blade, shorter and worn on Brunhilde's right hip, settled in his hand as if he were made for it.

The sound of blade against blade filled the forests clearing. The same one where they first met.

Brunhilde is skilled; after all she _is_ a Valkyrie. The edge of her sword to Thor's throat, lightly gripping a handful of his hair, she stares into his ice blue eyes. So close their noses touch, Brunhilde says, "You _are_ meant to be King. You _will_ be King. One day. And you will be great— greater than your father ever was, greater than your brother ever could be."

She dropped the sword to the ground with a muffled thud, kissed him then. Kissed him, not for the first time. But it was different, fiercely assured.

Thor settled his hands on her hips. "Brunhilde," he said, soft, "And you will be a great queen."

"I will be a great warrior."

°

She remembers him so vividly. The warmth of the sun and how it enveloped her. Filled her from the inside and became her.

Nakia and Okoye watch her closely. She feels their eyes on her, coolly tracing her movements through the kitchen. Day had broke, night had passed and Valkyrie's shattering pain had passed with it. She dried her eyes, put herself together as she has done for centuries passed, as she will do for centuries to come.

Coffee pours into the white mug. Milk mixes in with the turn of a teaspoon.

Valkyrie sighs.

They can hold her through her troubles, they can ignore their sleep to sit with her and run steady hands through her hair. They listen to her. They are there for her, but they don't _know._

They don't know how, when the blood of her sisters stained her armour 'til it was more a dark crimson than sparkling white, Thor had sat with her. For days she sat, staring at nothing, the uniform stinking and sticking to her skin, Thor's presence bordering the fringes of her consciousness.

They don't know how, when the darkness had settled in the pit of her stomach and made a home in her mind, he had filled her with his light.

By the end of it, he was all she had.  
He was her best friend and her only family.

She had stood so close to the precipice between life and death, had been so ready to follow her sisters to Valhal that she threw herself into senseless battles for months. Her anger was all-consuming; grief threatening to drown her and everyone around her.

It was unfair. Why was she allowed to live when everyone she had known and loved was dead? Why did _anybody_ get to live when the Valkyries couldn't, when they had been slain and sacrificed?

Thor stayed. When Valkyrie screamed at him to leave her alone; when Valkyrie had her dagger to his throat and yelled at him to let her die; when Valkyrie locked her door and refused to talk to him. He stayed.

He talked to her and didn't expect her to answer. He was silent when she needed him to be. He cooked for her and poured her glasses of water, kept her fed and hydrated when the mere thought of eating and drinking made her sick. He laid beside her, holding her or not, whispering sweet affirmations or not. He laid beside her, did not crinkle his nose at her when days passed and she couldn't bring herself to shower.

Nakia and Okoye support her, but they don't know.

Thor had saved her. That boy who held the sun inside his eyes and his smile, who had kissed her sweetly and braided flowers in her hair and told her he loved her every single day without any hesitation or expectations.

He had saved her. And she can't even find him.

 

 

 

 

_Surt_ _from the south fares_  
_With blazing flames;_  
_From the sword shines_  
_The sun of the_ _thunder-god_ _._  
_Rocks dash together_  
_And witches collapse,_  
_Men go the way to Hel_  
_And the heavens are cleft._

 

"'The sun of the thunder-god,'" Valkyrie murmurs, running a finger over the runes carved into the sturdy tree trunk. The line catches her eye and forces her brows to meet, to crease her forehead.

"Is that Thor?" Shuri asks, craning her neck to look over Valkyrie's shoulder.

"Yes." Valkyrie shakes her head and straightens. "It's Thor. But it shouldn't be. Look," she  says, glancing to the four women behind her, "It's from _The Prose Edda,_ but it's... wrong. The verse is wrong. It should say 'the sun of the war-god'... not this."

Wanda taps her fingers against her thigh, hooded eyes staring at the twigs and leaves littering the floor. She is quiet when she says what they're all thinking, "So, it's a clue."

Valkyrie nods, terrified to hope. "Maybe."

"At least we know we are headed in the right direction," Nakia says, rests a calloused hand on Valkyrie's shoulders. "We will find him."

 

_Forty_ _days,_ the deadline glares at her from the holographic calendar Shuri shows her. Valkyrie stares at it, counting and recounting just in case. Glares at her when she closes her eyes.

She curses Odin at every chance she gets. Curses him for forgetting her the moment Thor was taken, for waiting too long to contact her again, for taking so long to learn how to break the curse.

He is the All-father, Valkyrie thinks hatefully, Odin the wise and all-knowing. He should have known its origins right from the beginning.

 

It was Shuri who led them to the carved tree.

An ash tree grows in Thor's backyard. Valkyrie shakes her head when she sees it, smile dancing on her lips of its own accord.  
They planted it together, a lifetime ago. Laughing, love-drunk, not dressed warm enough for the early morning chill.

"It's not gonna grow," she said, kneeling beside Thor and helping him push the rich dirt over the buried seed.

"It will grow," he said, sure as he always was. He tangled their fingers together, pulling Valkyrie to stand when he did.

She fell into him, laughing, and pressed hard against his chest. The sweater she stole from his closet that morning fell midway to her thighs and left her legs bare. Matching in sweaters, hers deep yellow and his a brilliant red, and shorts that barely covered anything, the two of them stood in the shadow of his building.

"It's not gonna grow." Valkyrie whispered.

Thor kissed her and whispered back, "Maybe not. But wouldn't it be nice if it did." He twirled her artlessly, the spark in his eyes and his laugh so full of life. Pulling her to his chest again, he pressed a kiss to the top of her head.

She can feel him here, like she can feel him in his apartment and in her own and in the bar around the corner and the park down the street.

Remnants of his laugh echo around them, caught in the stretching branches of the tree.

"A tree to rival Yggdrasil," Valkyrie says, a quiet utterance for her own ears. Echoing Thor from ages ago. The ash is beautiful, of course it is— it came from his hands.

Shuri bounces on the tips of her toes, impatient. Nakia and Okoye follow close behind, pressed arm to arm, stepping over the cracks in the paved walkway.

"Be careful." Nakia holds out a hand for Wanda to take, directs her down the small flight of jagged rocks serving as stairs.

It happens behind Valkyrie and she pays them barely any mind.

Shuri was right. The runes carved into the tree don't just look new, they are new; as if etched into the bark that morning.

_The_ _thunder-god_ _,_ Valkyrie reads and rereads.

"So it's a clue?" Wanda asks, a hesitant statement.

"Maybe," Valkyrie says. She is used to hoping and having her hopes dashed. She is used to following fruitless leads, pushing herself beyond her limits and ending on her knees, at the end of a petered out trail, hands empty. It is painful to hope. "Maybe not," she adds, "Probably not. Some kids must know we're here."

Nakia and Okoye share a look Valkyrie can't decipher. "We would have heard someone sneak into the yard," says Nakia. 

  
"Especially if it were children," Okoye says.

She turns away from them. Hands in the pockets of her coat, Valkyrie stares at the etchings. She recites the words to herself from memory, having read _The Prose Edda_ more times than she can count; on her own, in groups of people, in kingdoms like and unlike Asgard, curled  beside Thor on a couch in front of a roaring fire.

A quiet sigh coils in the base of her throat, breath catches and curls in the crisp air. Dances to the tree's trunk and ghosts over the runes, seems to be absorbed by them.

"No—" she whispers, so softly her words get caught in the wind and snatched away.

"We will find him." Valkyrie wishes she could be as certain as Nakia sounds. "At least we know we are headed in the right direction."

Numbly, Valkyrie nods. The shadow the tree casts them in is too cold, too harsh, and she can't stand in it anymore. She turns on her heel and walks away, the emptiness of Thor's bed never seeming more welcoming.

A sharp scratching sound starts up from behind her. Maybe Wanda is scratching out that forsaken text, Valkyrie hopes so. Strip the tree of all its bark, chop it down to its stump, what does she care? The tree is no more Thor than the flowers in her apartment are her.

"Val..." Shuri calls out, hesitant. Then louder, excited, "Val. Val!"

"What?" she asks flatly, turning on her heel and meeting the young girls lively eyes.

"Look."

The four of them are silent. Struck by awe, by tendrils of fear and slivers of hope.

Letters carve themselves into the trunk, inches above the sloppy verse. Severe block letters, simple language this time instead of ancient rune.

_Hilde_ _?_ It spells out. Nobody calls her Brunhilde, not anymore. She touches her fingers to the four short letters, the solid question mark— it's him.

She stares at it dumbly, for hours or seconds or years. Time does not exist, not for any of them.

Her body reacts before her mind does and the dagger is in her hand before she has time to think about pulling the dagger out from its place in her belt.

_Where are you?_ Valkyrie carves. She can be sentimental later, she can be sentimental when she is actually holding him.

_North of the rising star. South of the crescent_ _moon_ _—_ The sentence constructs itself in the steady block letters which had spelled out her name. The letters turn into rough rune, drawing into the tree too quickly to be done by a person's hand.

The scream that tears from her throat is feral, shattering the remnants of peace that still settle around the complex. Shaking from anger, from unfiltered rage, she jams the dagger into the tree and watches through bleary eyes as the wood meets the shining black handle.

But the runes do not stop. It is an impersonal repetition of the same set. _North_ _of the rising star. South of the crescent moon._ He does not return.

*

"'North of the rising star, east of the crescent moon,'" Okoye quotes, bottom of her feet pressed to the edge of the glass coffee table. "Do these words mean anything to you?"

"They're from the fairytale," Valkyrie says, arms crossed over her chest. Her voice is stone, her face emotionless. She pretends her breakdown did not happen; they pretend with her. "This story that started to spread after he was taken." Palms tighten into fists. If she has had the answer the whole time, she will never forgive herself.

Nakia hums under her breath, thoughtful. "Tell us the story."

Fingers tapping out an unsteady rhythm, Valkyrie looks around at the four women looking at her. "They say there is a castle that rises so high it reaches beyond the skies, the clouds," she begins, on a sigh. A story she has heard so many times and has never given more than a second thought to. Shuri nods her head along with the words, of course she already knows the tale. "A castle with only one entrance and only one exit, made in this way so that the captured princess can never escape. People have searched for her, tirelessly and senselessly— have traveled to the vast corners of Asgard in search of her.  
"She is trapped north of the rising star and south of the crescent moon. If anyone has found her they have not lived to tell the tale, slaughtered at the hands of the witch who keeps her. Or eaten alive by the dragon who guards her."

Shuri's sharp intake of breath breaks the enchantment. Valkyrie raises her eyes from the grey marbled tile she focused her attention on, looks at Shuri and meets her gaze with a sad half-smile. "They say _princess_ but it's _Thor_. They're talking about Thor. I didn't know until Frigga told me— and I never _really_ thought about it until today."

"If the story is about Thor..." Nakia murmurs.

"Then it must tell us where he is," Okoye finishes without prompt.

Despite herself, despite the shitstorm that is her life right now, Valkyrie's lips twitch into a smile. Her heart is not so numbed by cold, she thinks. A love like theirs can still touch her, can still make her feel something other than bitter emptiness.

From where she sits, legs akimbo on the heated floor, tucked into a corner of the room, Shuri's fingers fly over a hovering keyboard. Valkyrie flickers her eyes over the screen and sniffs.

"I don't need a map to tell you exactly where north of the sun and east of the moon is— _nowhere_. It is nowhere."

Shuri shrugs. "Worth a try."

"He quoted from the _Edda,"_ Nakia muses quietly, slightly raising a pair of arching eyebrows in thought. "What was it again?"

"'Surt from the south fares with blazing flames; from the sword shines the sun of the war-god. Rocks dash together and witches collapse, men go the way to Hel and the heavens are cleft,'" Valkyrie effortlessly quotes.

Okoye catches on before Valkyrie does. "What do we know about Hel?"

Valkyrie ticks off on her fingers. She sees where this is going, she tamps down her excitement. "A region in Nieflheim ruled by Hel. Nearest realm to the roots of Yggdrasil... _Yggdrasil,"_ she says, and then, " _Nidhog."_

Shuri turns the screen to face the room says, "Found him," at the same time Valkyrie says, "He's in Hel."

*

That forty day deadline glares at her. The overconfident part of her, the part she never can really kill, screams that that is enough time. It tells her not to worry, they will be at Hel's gates before then.

But it is the quiet, cautious inner voice she listens to. For that is the part that knows best. It whispers that the walk to Hel's entrance is a long one, that the sunless-moonless journey before they sight the bridge, Gjallabrú, can take anywhere between nine and nine thousand days.

The do not have enough time; they do; they do not.

Valkyrie stills the moment she sees the armour, folded neatly beneath his and placed in a corner of the spare closet. The material as soft as she remembers, softer when she wears it.

"The journey to Hel is treacherous," Valkyrie stands in the lounge and says, looking first at Okoye and Nakia and then at Shuri and Wanda. She sees their bags packed for a trek and the weapons gleaming in their holders, she sees the spark of red in Wanda's fingers. She clears her throat, she is no good at heart-warming speeches. "Thank you. For everything. But beyond this point you are free to walk away, I will not hold it against you."

Nakia shakes her head.

Okoye mutters under breath, something Valkyrie can't understand. She looks at Valkyrie, meets her gaze and says, "You fool. Of course we are coming."

*

The sound of hooves beating a crooked path through thick forests, through towns, through cities, follows them. Distinguishes them. And by the entrance to the third village a group of villagers await them.

"The Valkyrie!" they yell, petals torn from flowers raining down on them.

"Her battalion of soldiers!" they yell, garlands raining down on them.

"They are off to slay the dragon, Nidhog," they chant and sing, the story spreading from kingdom to kingdom and finding the people before Valkyrie can, "They are off to save the stolen prince! They are off to save Thor!"

*

Brunhilde, her mother named her. _Ready for battle._ Born into this world in the midst of a raging storm, her first cry the storm's last.

Valkyrie, she renamed herself. _Chooser of the slain._ Born into this world on the death of her fallen sisters.

She has been alone for so long. Valkyrie looks around at the women riding beside and behind her and, whether or not they save Thor, she knows she will no longer be.

The grey fog is a wall enveloping them. It finds them from all sides and clings to them, touches them, leaves moist trails on their clothes and any bare skin. Chokes them when they breathe in, itches the back of Valkyrie's throat.

Corn snorts loudly, shakes her head irritably, worries at the ground with a hoof. The other horses are less outwardly worried, but they snort loudly and sniff at the thick air.

Wanda laughs nervously. "Sure would be nice if we could see where we're going."

"The road is unbending," Valkyrie tells them over her shoulder, "We go straight."

The fog thickens the further away they ride from the entrance, the closer to Niflheim they get.

Where Valkyrie could see the faint outline of a road she now sees nothing. She raises her hand to her eyes and cannot even see that.

She is a Valkyrie. A hardened warrior who has looked death in the eye many times, looked him in the eye and smiled. Fears' cold hand grip at her heart, squeeze, try to convince her to turn back from whence she came— Valkyrie steels herself, uses the fear to spur her forward.

They see nothing. Not for miles or days or weeks. And over the stamping of the horses hooves, the sound of the dead— dragging their feet, shuffling, moaning, crying— is barely audible; a distant noise, a presence that affects none of them.

The _clang! clang! clang!_ that shakes the ground and leaves the women deafened and grabbing at the sides of their heads the moment Corn's hoof falls forward to the ground is the only way they know they've reached Gjallabrú.

The clanging grows louder with each step they take. No living creatures is permitted to walk this path, the path of the dead.  
Blood drips from Valkyrie's ears, stains her skin in sickening shades and colours the white edge of her armour.

_Turn back,_ it seems to yell. _You have no business within this realm. Turn back._

"State your name and lineage," a voice cuts through the fog-darkness to greet them. Modgud, the bridges ageless guard.

"Brunhilde," she states clearly, voice harsh from the silence they have forced upon themselves, "Of the Valkyries."

"What business do you have in Niflheim?"

"I seek the stolen prince, Thor. Taken against his will and before his time." Clearly, Valkyrie speaks. The fog thins enough for her to meet the pale eyes of the young giantess.

The ringing in her ears lessens. She cannot see much, but the lazy sounds of the river Gjoll reaches her. She sets her jaw and stills the fidgeting horse.

"You are free to enter," Modgud says.

Valkyrie's nod is stiff. Over her shoulder she gestures for the other women to follow her.

"No." Modgud bars their way, a gleaming staff placed across the bridges end. "No living but the Valkyrie shall pass. Not on this day the eve."

Nakia rests a hand on Valkyrie's elbow, calloused hand cupping the bend in her arm with care.

Valkyrie swallows quietly. For weeks they have stood by her side— searched with her, lived with her, ridden into the depths of the underworld with her.

Okoye bows her head in a nod. She locks Valkyrie in her gaze and sees beyond the carefully schooled blankness in her features. "Find your boy," Okoye says, "Save him. Bring him home."

Valkyrie sets her shoulders firmly, a strong, straight line. 

And, looking at each of the women, she shrinks at the heaviness which settles in her heart and in the pit of her stomach. The words she had searched for come easily to her now.

"I will find my way back to you," she says, "I never deserved your help or your friendship, but you granted it to me and I am forever grateful—"

Nakia lifts a hand and stops Valkyrie from speaking. "You can tell us when you leave this place."

"Don't damage the cape, Val," Shuri says, "It's mine when you get out of this place."

"It's yours," Valkyrie promises with a quiet rumbling of laughter.

Wanda's hair falls in her face when she lowers her head. "Good luck," she says, her almost silent wish slow in reaching Valkyrie. Tears thicken her voice.

"Down and to the North to reach Hel," Modgud monotones.

Valkyrie feels their eyes on her— fiercely brilliant and watchful from the four women, blankly curious from Modgud— until she she disappears into the fog and the rising wall of trees.

 

Time is her enemy, has been since she stepped foot upon Niflheim's dark entrance. In this realm, more than any other, it is a fluid concept, refusing to be bound.

It is the eve of Alfablót, Modgud said as much. If Valkyrie does not find Thor now, a hundred years will pass before she is able to see him again.

So she presses her heels into her horses flank, Valkyrie does. The wind strips her face raw, and stings her eyes until there are tears in them, and whips her hair into a frenzied halo.

But she is Valkyrie.

And she grits her teeth and rides against the winds. And she breathes through the stench of death and rotting flesh. And she does not stop until she stands at the towering gates of Hela's hall.

"I must speak to this realm's queen," Valkyrie demands, entering through the open front doors.

The glory of Eljudnir rises around her. She stares at Hela, draped in her elaborate throne, and sees nothing else.

"Is that how you address a goddess?" Hela questions in a slow drawl, one perfectly sculpted eyebrow raised in question.

Valkyrie falls to one knee before her throne, unashamed and unquestioning. She is many things but she is no fool— this is Hel, it would be wise of her to have the goddess' favour.

"I—"

"Yes, yes, I know," Hela says, "You need my help. You need a soul. You need a moment with the seeress." She points a long slender, black-nailed finger to the gold bands decorating Valkyrie's arms. "A gift to your queen first."

Valkyrie does not hesitate. Hela is cold to the touch, like the kingdom in which she presides. A smile twists her lips cruelly upward and a gleam enters her eyes at the weight of the armband.

Hands held at her sides, her cape billowing in the wind finding its way into the hall, Valkyrie stares into Hela's eyes of ice. Voice strong, loud over the chattering of the dead, she says, "I have come for Thor, the prince of Asgard. I know he is here in Hel."

"Look around you." Hela spreads her arms wide, indicates the filled room. "He is not here. At least, he is not in Eljudnir."

"What does that mean? Then he is in Hel?"

Hela shrugs. "Time is running out, little Valkyrie. Alfablót draws near."

"Tell me where he is, Hela!" Valkyrie demands. The tight hands of fear ignored, she yells at the dark queen, the jaded goddess.

Clammy hands curl around her each of her upper-arms. With unparalleled strength two of Hela's dead slaves drag Valkyrie from the great hall. Her deep cackling laugh echoes off the high walls and follows Valkyrie out.

The ground scrapes the side of her face, the servants carelessly throwing her beyond the iron gates.

_Does it end here?_ she thinks, numb from the cold and staring at a the end of a grave mound. _Pressed into the dirt and bleeding?_ After having searched for so long, will she have nothing to show for it?

Valkyrie rises. She remembers what she said to Nakia and Okoye when she first asked for their help.

Valkyrie rises. Her hand on the double-edged sword at her side, she faces Hela's mansion. If the queen won't tell her where in this forsaken realm Thor is then Valkyrie will fight it out of her.

They say Hela is so consumed by anger and hate that she fears nothing and no one. Will she feel the same with a Valkyrie over her, a sword to her jugular vein?

_Don't fight her._ The wind whispers to her and halts her train of throat. A servant stares blankly at her, she exits the hall with a bucket of old water and moves so slowly she does not seem to be moving at all. _You will not win. Go to Yggdrasil. He has waited for you._

 

She rides to Yggdrasil. Hela's laugh in her ears and a yell burning in her throat, dying to be free and to twist in the wind around her and disappear behind her.

Mountains rises beyond her, steep drops greet her and do little to deter her. The dead watch her, shades of the people they once were, their empty eyes graze over her as she rushes past.

Valkyrie is unrelenting in her quest to reach the life tree, growing in the center of Niflheim. Alfablót's eve draws near to an end. She cannot wait another one hundred years.

Corn grunts loudly, protests the speed and force but does not give in.

In the distance, the holy ash tree rises from the harsh ground. Its solid trunk beckons to Valkyrie.

Her yell is a brittle thing, as brittle as the soil and crumbling towers of Hel. It tangles angrily with hoof beats, with the ticking down of the minutes Valkyrie hears banging in her head and in her ears.

Nidhog, his incessant gnawing at Yggdrasil's thick root. Valkyrie hears him before he sees him.  
She rounds a bend sharply and does not slow as the distance between her and Yggdrasil lessens. Gracelessly, her legs moving as if they are unaccustomed to anything but the most brutish of actions, she dismounts Corn.

"A Valkyrie in Hel? Alive?" Nidhog, his fearsome dragon breath stinking worse than the rot of Hel, stops chewing the root long enough to say, "How nice."

"I don't care about you, lizard." Her swords, unsheathed and heavy in her hands, do not gleam in the dullness. "Where is Thor?"

The dragon snorts. "An Asgardian without manners, how surprising." He bares his teeth menacingly. "I've waited a hundred years to get a taste of the prince. Damn you to Hel if you think you can stop me."

At that, Valkyrie laughs. Her laugh is colder than the laugh Hel had bid her farewell with, harsher. "Fun fact, lizard, I already am in Hel. I've been in Hel my whole life."

Nidhog snarls. Yggdrasil shimmers beneath him, his body tangled around its thick girth.  
Meters above the ground, a part of the tree itself, Valkyrie spies the hole, like the frame of a window. There, and gone.  
Valkyrie knows.

She moves with a practiced swiftness, a terrifying brutality. Tied in knots as he is, Nidhog does not move as fast as Valkyrie does.

Cape flying out behind her, she is a flash of blue and white and gold, of brown skin and hair to rival. She is a weapon; she is a masterpiece.

"Fool!" Nidhog screams. His thundering voice shakes the ground, crumbles the sides of cliffs and mountains.

He slithers to the left and dodges the first strike of Valkyrie's sword. She catches him with the tip, sharpened by Wanda before they left for Hel, and grins wickedly at the gash in his neck, at the spread of red in his scales.

She twirls the swords in her hands artfully, raises them both and runs toward Nidhog. He slithers forward, just the end of his tail now curled around Yggdrasil. He darts forward, snake-like, menacing.

"Scared?" Valkyrie asks. Her right sword meets the side of Nidhog's snout, her smile widens at his strangled scream.

"Never," he spits venomously, and grabs the sword between his teeth. He rips it from Valkyrie's grip, taking strips of skin with it. With a thud reverberating in the clearing, it lands against a dying tree.

Her eyes close and she breathes in deeply. The sword in her left hand falls into her open right hand, falls to the ground when the dragon roars. His roar sends Valkyrie into the rock wall behind her— she crumples to the ground. White vision, pain searing through her body, she does not scream.

Nidhog laughs, mercilessly. Slow and assured he takes his time and advances. "Poor Brunhilde," he mocks, "The last of the Valkyries. And, oh, what a pitiful excuse you are." His breath falls over her in hot sheets. "You should have stayed in Asgard... Now, tell me, little Valkyrie, are you ready to join your sisters in death?"

Valkyrie sighs. "No," she whispers. Blood slicks her fingers and she tightens her grip on the handle of her slim dagger and stabs the knife into Nidhog's chest m. "I am a Valkyrie," she begins, staring Nidhog in the eye as she drives the knife deeper into his heart, as she twists, "I die in battle or on my own terms."

The dimness in his eyes does nothing to her. She watches the light fade and the colour drain from his face and feels not even an inkling of emotion.

The dagger hilt-deep in Nidhog's chest, Valkyrie drops her hand, wipes it on the mountains surface.

There is the ticking in her ears again, the pounding at the base of her skull. Corn stands on her back legs and neighs loudly.

The air around Yggdrasil shivers. Valkyrie's footsteps, in the foreboding silence, land with heavy thuds. She stands at the base of the tree and looks up.

The magic wavers. The spells power stuck between weakening for the hundred years end and strengthening for the next century's beginning.

_Brun_ _,_ she hears his voice, so clear he might have his mouth pressed right to the shell of her ear. _You came for me._

The dew-moistened trunk is slick beneath her hands. Her fingernails, hands stained crimson, dig into the bark. Fighting for purchase on the damp gnarled surface, Valkyrie grits her teeth and fits her feet into grooves. She struggles, she climbs.

He is so close to her, she can feel it. Can picture his smile, his clear eyes. Can smell him— like sweat after a battle and the iron from the forges, she can smell him.

So she grits her teeth, Valkyrie does. Fingernails break and tear violently from their beds, her cape catches in the wind, her hair falls in her face. She fights against the hot wind, hotter than Nidhog's breath, threatening to push her from Yggdrasil and to the faraway ground.

So she grits her teeth, grunts gutturally, and she climbs.

The window frame she saw grows nearer. Through the shimmering, fading magic which masked it, Valkyrie sees more than a distant outline. There is a soft red curtain falling over the hole in the tree, there is light filtering pink through it.

"Thor," Valkyrie whispers, stunned. A sparrow swoops in her chest, flutters her heart and in her stomach. So close.

She reaches out to grab hold of a root, jutting outward. Solid square fingers tightening around the it, Valkyrie heaves herself up. _So close,_ she thinks, _so_ _clo_ _—_ Her silent scream catches in her throat. The root, broken and clutched in her grip, gives way the moment she pulled.

She can hear Hela, her vile laugh, and doesn't know whether it is all in her mind or carried from Eljudnir on the wind.

Falling, she scrabbles to grab ahold of _anything._

_Is this it?_ Her frenzied thoughts run without her control. _Dying when I am so close? Dying, and leaving him in this inescapable prison._

Memories of the Valkyries come to her unbidden. Strong, pained, memories of a hard body pushing Valkyrie— Brunhilde, then— out of the way and taking the fatal hit meant for her.

_You can tell us when you leave this place._

Valkyrie digs her fingers into a groove, holds herself with just the strength of her right hand.

She did not die centuries ago, she will not die today. She cannot die.  
Can't, because she is the last Valkyrie; can't, because she promised her cape to Shuri and if she dies in this cesspit no one will give it to her; can't, because Wanda lost a brother and losing Valkyrie after just meeting her will crush her soul; can't, because she looked Nakia and Okoye in the eye and promised that she will find them.

She can't die. Not on this day, not on any other day. There are too many people counting on her.

She climbs. Nearing the window, Valkyrie screams, "Thor! Thor, you useless idiot, you better be ready for me."

Fingers part the curtain— familiar fingers, rough and squared, that Valkyrie would know anywhere.

"Valkyrie." Thor calls. His voice finds Valkyrie as if through a wall of water, something like hope in it, something like fear and trepidation.

He forces his hands beyond the curtain, the window frame. Old sores open on his hands and arms but he pushes through, reaches through the forcefield for Valkyrie.

Blood drips in slim rivulets down his burn-blackened hands. Valkyrie inhales deeply, allows the stale oxygen to fill her lungs, and she takes ahold of him. Clasps his hand in one of hers, his forearm between the other, and pulls.

Feet embedded in Yggdrasil, she reaches through the shimmering boundary and grips his shoulder.

She is a Valkyrie; she is made of power, is built on the teachings of a million warrior women. She will not be defeated.

Her yell is wild. Animalistic.

"'Men go the way to Hel,'" she grunts absently. _Men._ Not a Valkyrie. Not Thor.

She pulls. The forcefield breaks, shatters like Mjolnir itself had smashed into its surface. Shatters like glass, but with a force to shudder Yggdrasil. To shudder Hel.

Hands entwined, they fall.

°

"I knew you were coming," Thor tells her, burnt and torn arms dripping blood onto Valkyrie, "I could feel you. All these years, I could feel you."

"Yeah?" Valkyrie says. She slaps Thor weakly on his back. "No more bets, okay, you idiot? No more bets."

Thor nods. "No more bets," he promises.

Leaning on each other, they help each other out of Hel.

 

**Author's Note:**

> If you want to see how I procrastinate, shoot me some asks or just hang out, you can find me on [Tumblr](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/shuriidyke)


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